Concerning Perspectives and Pink Sweaters

It's all about perspective. The more we focus on things, the more we miss. I consider myself to be an observant person, but I know that left to my own devices I easily become overwhelmed with the details. So much of me is about the details.

Sometimes, details feel like they're all I have. I cling to them, and they cling to me.

Last week a sweet, wonderful little soul moved on.

Today I needed something pink to wear to her visitation.

Pink. The simplest of gestures.

As I stood in front of my closet, I felt the weight of so many things pressing against me. The lack of a place to live in less than a month, new job, new schools, lack of money brought about by my own gullibility, leaving all familiarity for the unknown. So many variables. So many worries.

But in that moment I just needed something pink.

Because that moment wasn't about me, or my problems, real or imagined.

It was about finding a fitting way to say goodbye. It was about letting go.

Sometimes, when life seems to be at its most complicated, focusing on the simple things is the best solution.

In that moment, there was no me, worries, houses, money or false promises.

There was only a pink sweater.

More details about the sweet soul in question, can be found here: Lifewithlol.com

 

 

Poor, Poor, Beaver Blog

Here's the thing about having a blog...not updating it, doesn't mean you don't have anything to say. On the contrary, usually it means you have too many things to say.

I've felt completely smothered by words over the last few months; first waves, then just a gradual drowning; so gradual, I didn't even realise it had happened until it was too late.
So late, that the mere act of writing them all down felt completely overwhelming. I just felt, so much-too much- everything.

Everything I wrote seemed too angry, too self-pitying, too accusatory, too heartbroken. There just seemed to be a never ending flow of words. Too personal. Too mean.

I don't consider myself a cruel person; I have my moments, but I've always tried to put out into the world what I wanted back. So when things went wrong, I felt like they were going wrong on an epic scale.

I thought I had something, but I broke it somehow. I don't think I'll ever really know what I did. I'm sure there was a list. But it broke part of my heart I thought I'd forgotten. Hell, it broke something I didn't think I had to break.

I coped poorly. Which is to say I broke the rules by which I judge others so harshly. I hurt other people who cared about me, and for that, I can only hope to earn their forgiveness.

Pardon my french, but it just seemed like the proverbial clusterfuck. My friend's father found out he had terminal cancer, which in itself was horrible enough, but then he asked that I stay with him and his family while he was in hospice. Apparently he felt I'd make everybody laugh...and because I'd known him since I was eight I agreed. But it was harder than I thought hard could be. I know in the end, I made the right decision, but still. Having to speak at a funeral to a congregation of people who were only listening because the guy in the coffin told them they had to listen was very disheartening.

Then I broke a promise to somebody who'd never been anything but sweet to me; the shame I felt just added to the guilt I was already feeling about everything else. So the cycle continued.
I hurt, and my hurt spilt over.

This is already way too long, and way too whiny and full of self pity. I apologise to everyone who has read until the end, but thank you for listening.

Essentially a Post Where I Whine. Alot.

Sometimes, late at night, when it's just me and my computer, I find myself asking the questions I'd never dream of asking during the day. At the end of the day, I know the answer though, and the answer breaks my heart.

Even trying to get them out now is harder than it should be.  These last few weeks have been incredibly difficult for me. The beginning of the month marked a very important date to me, even if it went completely unnoticed by others. I lost somebody very dear to me, and for the first time, though I'd never so much as hinted at needing support before, I felt very alone.

Mid month would have been my ten year anniversary with the Big Green, and though I haven't regretted leaving it for more than a minute, all that I'd turned my back on stung a little.
Then last week I received another blow about my seemingly never ending health saga, and when I reached out, which in itself is a rarity, I found myself systematically shut out.

You know when one thing feels like it leads to another, and another and another? Suddenly I felt completely overwhelmed by everything. It felt like my meticulously constructed, safe little life was crumbling and I was powerless to stop it.

My husband, bless his goofy aspie heart, tried. He really tried. But he couldn't give me back what I felt was lost.
So I sit, musing, writing, musing.
I'll cry later.

London Lament

A few weeks before my scheduled trip to London, an unexpected parcel arrived in the mail; in it, I found gifts from a person I'd never met. At the time, I was distraught at missing out on all the fun everyone seemed to be having, so you can imagine the utter shock I felt, opening the box to discover this:

Holding something this tangible, made the anticipation so very real to me, I hardly wanted to speak about my trip in case speaking of it, somehow caused it to be taken away.

I have been back in Montreal for nearly two weeks and have started to write this more times than I care to count. Truthfully, I started to write it that Friday night after the play, but found the experience too emotional, too personal.

My week in London, was, for lack of a better word, magic. It may sound cliché, in fact, I know it sounds cliché, but that’s how it felt.

I had the opportunity to meet wonderful people, see beautiful sites and be a small part of something I’d dreamt of for nearly half a year. In a nutshell, that’s the problem. Putting so much emphasis on something, and using it as a touchstone, is a dangerous game.

Truthfully, I’m not going to bother with the intimate details of the trip, for they are mine, and I’m not going to name drop to justify my place in the fandom. I’m not even going to review the play. I was blessed to be able to see it on two occasions, and both performances were refreshingly different and deeply captivating.

Moments sparkled. I felt peace for the first time in years. I told myself the trip was a gift to myself, but it was oh so much more than that. Even now, I find myself unable to fully articulate what I want to say. How much I want to say thank you. I don’t consider myself an emotional person, but I find myself fumbling to find the words I need to express the myriad of feelings in my heart.

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”~ Epicurus

Becoming Beaver

Well, it finally happened. I've up and left Big Green for well, greener pastures...and I seem to have landed smack dab in the middle of the fashion industry. I'm working with a company creating a truly unique platform for modelling. I won't go into it in detail here, but I feel like a fish out of water with all these glamorous fashion types. 

I've been asked, no doubt due to my lack of fashion know how to blog about my journey into fashion.

That blog, 'Fashion on a Tangent' can be found here .

Below was my intro post, discussing my experiences with my younger sister in the fashion world.

Part two to follow.

Becoming

I never saw myself as working in the fashion industry. Hell, I never saw myself as fashionable; that was my sister’s ‘thing’. From the time we were little girls, I was always the ‘smart one’ and she was always ‘the pretty one’. Certainly, there were worse labels to have and I certainly never tried to fight the one my parents had assigned me. I did well in school, and she did not. She modelled and excelled at each and every trend that blew into town; I did not.

In many ways these labels would shape who we became. As the years wore on, I was still the smart one, but I felt the need to wage a personal war on fashion. I dyed my hair, first black, and then pink. Tattoos and piercings came next, followed by dark, studded clothes and combat boots. Going to my sister’s photo shoots I would read Nietzsche and scowl while she was dressed from head to toe in everything from chiffon to Christmas tree lights. I told myself fashion didn’t matter; that I was above it. In private moments I wondered why fate had made me short and round, and her tall and slim.

But the years went on and the changes began to happen…little things at first, hair colour, tanning, and then bigger things. The first nose job at sixteen. Breast Augmentation at seventeen.

Below the Line Reflections

So the Wog and I just finished our last day of 'Below the Line', with our charity of choice being UNICEF.

$1.75 is the Canadian equivalent of the extreme poverty line. Living on so little gave us a glimpse into the challenges faced by the 1.4 billion people who have no choice but to live below the line every day – for everything - food, medical care, transport, education, everything.

Our Below the Line Page

It was definitely an affair to remember. When I first broached the subject with him a few weeks ago, he was very hesitant; he felt it might negatively impact our kids. Thankfully, I think having them present [though not participating] enriched the experience.

Living on less than two dollars a day is a lot harder than it seems on paper; that was the first lesson we learnt. Just grocery shopping turned into an epic journey of frustration and compromise.
He wanted hot dogs [ew] and I wanted eggs...I conceded but only if I didn't have to eat the oatmeal.

As a side note, anyone who has read earlier posts in this blog knows that last year we nearly lost our house; it's not something I like to talk about, but it did happen, and during that period of time I was a master of the family budget. Trying to stretch things became a matter of pride for me; it didn't matter if half our food was coming from Dollarama...we were eating and that was the important thing.

It did hurt my heart a little when Goose asked 'Momma, did Daddy lose his job again?' when we sat down to our first dinner. Thankfully, after a careful explanation both he and Roux relaxed and came to enjoy that they were eating a variation of our meals.

All in all it was a learning experience, and a valuable one; it helped us remind us how close we came to losing everything we had...but it also helped us see how far we'd come.

Dance with My Father Again

No, this is not to be a 'Below the Line' post, because I'm waiting until the end of the week to gather my thoughts.

Here's what I do want to write about. I've been mulling this over in my head for days, trying to decide if I wanted to put it out there or not, and this post will be the result...if it manages to come out slightly more coherently than it sounds in my head. Probably not.

Our relationships with our parents are complicated ones. As children they seem perfect to us, untouchable, never doubted. As we become teenagers they are the opposite; disparaged, mocked and ridiculed.  I won't even touch on what manifests as we reach adulthood. No, I'm not passing judgement on anybody else's relationship with their parents...this is my blog and I'm talking about me.

My childhood with my Daddy was a love story. He was my everything, and I always thought he could do no wrong. In a way he only disappointed me once. Only once.

On May 2nd 1993 my Daddy died, in the garage of our home, alone. I found him there. I called the ambulance. I did everything they said. I screamed to God, the neighbours, and anyone who would listen; but he died anyways. It was five days before my fifteenth birthday.

The problem with this, is that in those twenty odd minutes while I waited for the ambulance, I lost nearly all the good memories I had. They were buried beneath anger, betrayal and death.

Like any good girl I've had therapy; years of it. So I built my memory palace [mine is more of a cottage but still] and I filled it with information, facts...stuff. I have a 'Daddy' room; over the years I've cataloged  and filed away every image, story detail, sense memory, everything. I have it all. It fills rows of books, all colours, textures, scents. If you were to come into the room it would seem like a shrine. It is in many ways.

Except one. There's one memory that doesn't stay on any shelf I put it one. Visually it's a box, not a book and if you made the mistake of opening it, its' howls and screeches knock everything else down.
I hate that damn box. I only open it one night a year. Thursday will be that night.

But this year, the twentieth year he's been gone from me I have an unexpected weapon. Three days ago I received a very unexpected gift from a childhood friend. Her father had been digitising their home movies and she sent me one so I could see how young we all were. It was filmed in 1988 and the quality wasn't the best, but suddenly, as I was halfheartedly watching, there was my father. In all his stupid fisherman's hat, too short shorts glory. I HEARD HIS VOICE. I hadn't heard that voice in twenty years. Twenty years.

East Hill Farm 1988

This girl has no idea how precious those three seconds were to me. To hear a voice that I had long forgotten, that I never expected to hear again. Just wow.

Oh My Daddy. Not a day goes by that I don't think of you and wonder, 'What if?'

Thank you for reading my long and rambling post. So sorry if I offended or upset anyone.

Bicycles and Blah

You know, when I first started writing this blog, I swore up and down it wouldn't be a MommyBlog; not that there is anything remotely wrong with MommyBlogs, I had just been there and done that. This was supposed to be a random, perverted something-or-rather...

But, as art [not particularly good art] tends to imitate life [not particularly interesting life] this blog is slowly becoming me and my life at its [not so] finest.

This past Sunday Goose learnt to ride his bike without training wheels. To most, this is a normal right of passage that occurs with little angst. Not so in the Mommy Mab household.

Goose, being Goose, had long had a longstanding love/hate relationship with his bicycle...he was still using his tricycle at five, and was only barely coaxed off that, when his Grandma bought him a bike for his sixth birthday. Wog and I never fought it; it didn't bother us what he rode, so long as he was having a good time.
Everything changed on Sunday though; Goose attended a classmates birthday where though he won the bowling [given that I've never taken him bowling I thought that was an accomplishment], he was upset when everyone was riding and he couldn't.

When I arrived to pick him up he was sitting morosely on the curb while all the other kids biked around. He was happy enough to explain the mathematics of bowling to me, over and over, but I noticed he kept looking at the other kids.
'
Would you like Mommy to go and get your bike?' I asked
He shook his head,
'It has four wheels; I don't want them to see'.
This broke my heart, because I've never, ever said anything like that to him.

So I asked the Super!Dad running the party to help us out...and it worked! Within half an hour Goose was zipping [well, and zagging] around with the others.

Moral of the story: Our kids will always surprise us...no matter what!

And now to share two gorgeous pictures of my Littles by Kelly Meagan Photography...

 Photos by Kelly Meagan
https://www.facebook.com/kellymeaganphoto?fref=ts

Beaver Unplugged

Okay, so tonight I had my first true troll experience on Twitter. Now, I've been involved in online fangirling for nearly fourteen years now [yes, I'm THAT old ;)]...ever since Buffy came along, so I'm no stranger to trolls. When I was younger it always seemed like some extra excitement to shake up our message boards.

But now that I'm older, and not necessarily more mature, I found the experience rather upsetting. Not in a you-hurt-my-feelings kinda way...just sort of, really, REALLY? Did you really just send me not one, but FOUR DMs?

Tiny bit 'o personal information; I work in a high security environment...nothing terribly interesting, but still security is involved. I'm also the Social Media and Communications Champion so I'm in charge of the company's Twitter etc. among other things. What this means is, as an individual, I'm not supposed to be on Facebook, Twitter...or Blogger [oops].

After much back and forth with the company, I got permission to use Facebook, provided I didn't post or join inappropriate things/groups.  When I wanted to join the Hiddlestoners group I had to draft a memo...yes, an actually memo, outlining why I wanted to join the group. Which, I'm positive my VP didn't actually read, because the first response came back, 'Rejected. Relates to Drug/Alcohol'.

Ah, bureaucracy at its finest! 

Now, I make no secret of the fact that I joined Twitter [without my company's permission] largely because I found the Hiddlestoners  group to be such a glorious bunch of people. They were the first people I spoke with on Twitter, and everything has always been great. I love participating in my own little way, even though I don't really have much to say.

I'm very aware my handle isn't pleasing to some, but it's close to my heart as it was a nickname given to me by a coworker who died two years ago...

I can honestly say in all my years, through various fandoms, I have never come across a more diverse, creative, giving group of people than them. I owe then alot. I was going through a really rough patch in my life, and they made me smile every day...even if I was just lurking in the corner :)

Wow. This is getting long.

At any rate, tonight, who should happen to tweet just as I logged in? Dear Mr Hiddleston.  Now, this never happens...I can't post from work and I don't have a phone, so I have to make due with reading about it after the fact. But tonight I was determined to post! In my eagerness {I am a beaver afterall} my tweet made absolutely no grammatical sense...I was so embarrassed, but my pride kept me from deleting it.
I moved on, made dinner for the kids, started a load of laundry...then the first DM arrived. It detailed my insulting behaviour and advised me to apologise immediately. Er, okay. But then the second arrived, more insulting, more demanding...plus two more which I wouldn't have wanted my kids to read.

I didn't realise until that moment how ferociously possessive some fans are. I didn't realise the sheer nastiness people were capable of venting to complete strangers. I won't name the person in question, but I've heard of her before.  I've never had to block a fellow fan, and the Mom in me hated doing it.

A great big thank you to everyone who wrote me afterwards; I never really thought anybody knew I was there. Thank you. It means alot.

The soul does not surrender to despair without having exhausted all illusions

"L'âme ne se rend pas au désespoir sans avoir épuisé toutes les illusions." ~Victor Hugo

"The soul does not surrender to despair without having exhausted all illusions."

I haven't read 'Les Miserables' since grade nine, but over the past two weeks found myself pulling out my tattered old copy and revisiting it. I was an angry young person and it suited my mood at the time; nobody made me read it, and I learnt to read in French before English so it only made sense that I would read it in its original form [that, and I was a terrifically pretentious Goth girl].

Something about Tom Hiddleston's visit to Guinea really touched a nerve, as I'm sure it did with alot of people following his blog posts. I've spent the better part of two years, though only five months on this blog, complaining and wailing to anyone who would listen how hard my life had become. I did it over, and over again, like some kind of bad country song...first we lost the job, than the car, than the house...

But I never really stopped to think about anything other than what was happening in my little corner of the world; I never realised how selfish I was being. Now, this isn't about to turn into a 'He changed my world' type post, but something has changed and I'm not sure if I can quite put my finger on it. I have come to the realisation that I'm not putting enough good into the world; I want to give more.  I've spent the better part of ten years working at the Big Green making mounds of money for one man. My unit alone pulled in nearly half a billion dollars last year. Half a Billion Dollars...for one man. When I think of all the things that money could be doing I feel ashamed. I want my time and energy to matter, to mean something. Something other than a bottom line in somebody's ledger.

So I'm going to dig deep and see if I can make some changes. So I'll end with the words of another great man: " If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make that change". ~Michael Jackson